Silence and Separation
by hedgehog117
Summary: Distance is an important thing to Bond. Of course, Q has a tendency to upturn Bond's ideas. M and Eve know shit.


**A/N: **All thanks to the one this is gifted to, she is an evil mastermind don't fall into her clutches. (AnotherNewWorld on AO3). Furthermore, I listed the 3rd Q as a character, because that was the latest one offered, even though it was my understanding that Whishaw's Q was the fourth?

* * *

After Vesper, 007 decided trust wasn't something he could give anymore.

After M's death, he decided not to get attached at all.

Q's voice in his ear ruined everything.

* * *

The first month of active duty with his new Quartermaster passed uneventfully, except for one instance which, in hindsight, Bond realized had ruined everything.

He was on a mission in some hellhole of a country, disassembling an arms dealer's organization. The assignment was going surprisingly well. That wasn't the problem.

One of MI6's less competent agents had fouled up a simple op, and Q was dealing with the fallout. He'd forgotten to cut the link with Bond, and the spy was more than a little amused at Q's distracted murmurings.  
"No, why would you even do that, my secretary knows better...Come to think of it, do I have a secretary?...Mm, I'll just hack into the CIA's database, it'll be simpler than the diplomatic approach...Or I could just e-mail Henricksen, he owes me after...or did I...Easier to hack in."  
Bond suppressed a chuckle at that, imagining Q was the only one who would call hacking into an ally government's database easier than calling in a favour.  
An unerringly short moment later, Q huffed in satisfaction. "Not too terrible, I'll leave a note for Henricksen, so he notices the change. Maybe I could use a different polymer to increase the sensitivity."  
James marveled at the rapidity at which Q's thoughts changed tacks, especially since the clacking of keys could still be heard. Apparently, Q's mind moved faster than his lithe fingers. Bond turned his focus back to the man he was tailing- not that he would lose track of the target, the assignment was too easy.  
Perhaps five minutes passed as 007 listened idly to Q's occasional mumble and thoughtful hum. Hopefully, he wouldn't notice he was still connected to Bond, as this was far more diverting than the petty crooks and puddle-deep women that Bond had been dealing with as of late.  
"Ah!" Q cried out, almost as if in pain, and Bond instinctively reached for his Walther, forgetting for a moment that Q was still in MI6 headquarters.  
"Incompetence," Q grumbled after a tense moment on Bond's part. "Eurgh, this will take all day to sort out, the fool can't even calibrate his own machines, why is he handling Bond's equipment?" "This whole section is unnecessary, not to mention unreliable."  
"Not that Bond would notice, it would probably have been devoured by an enormous iguana before it had the chance to break," Q said, frustration with a hint of amusement in his voice.  
"That was one time," Bond replied coolly, enjoying the sound of Q's chair topple and his small exclamation of surprise. "And it was a komodo dragon."  
"Jesus, Bond, I'd forgotten I still had the earpiece."  
"Evidently," Bond said, distracted as he scanned the warehouse his target had entered. What a cliché.  
Q clearly mistook the tone of the statement, "I apologize. It won't happen again. Do you need anything, 007?" he asked, seeping professionalism. For some reason, this irritated Bond. He'd missed Q's sharp tongue of late, avoiding most of his colleagues since Silva. Even Moneypenny had become distant and cold.  
Sighing slightly as he fixed a suppressor to his gun, Bond made a mistake in his answer. He wanted to allow Q off the link. Instead, Bond's reply surprised even him, "No, just taking out the target. However, I would prefer you stay, it relieves the boredom."  
A pause ever so slightly too long convinced Bond he had broken some rule. Again.  
"I don't mind," Q answered, and settled back into his work.

* * *

Q hated 007. The man had remained silent while Q's inane chatter filled his ears. Not only was it unprofessional, it was damn near voyeuristic.

Q couldn't get a read on Bond. The man was known for both irreverence and his staunch loyalty, his irresponsibility despite miraculous results- and sex. Mostly sex. Supposedly, tantalizing charm was his main characteristic.

No one would say that after the last couple of weeks. The man was a damned machine: find, shoot, report, repeat. No suave exploits with any MI6 women (or men) and none in the field unless it was part of the mission.

Q groaned inwardly, careful to keep his reaction silent, and set his face in his palms.

As long as Bond stayed alive, and Q wasn't forced to listen to his dying breaths, utterly helpless and completely removed, then everything would be...peachy.

* * *

Bond returned from the mission, heading directly to Q's office and presenting his gun smugly, "No iguanas."

He took in Q's expression, oddly blank. The genius looked like he was attempting to figure something out. Bond had felt oddly at sea after his comm was destroyed, and was hoping for some withering remark from Q once they could speak again.

A beat passed. Q nodded slightly and turned back to one of his computers.

Bond shook off a trace of disappointment and left to report to M.

* * *

Q noticed a slight change in Bond, beginning with the intact gun. Moneypenny mentioned over tea that her light banter with Bond had resumed. Tanner's face stopped pinching up whenever 007 walked in the room. The junior agents stopped treating Bond like a walking explosion and more like a living legend. The respect remained, but the fear dropped out of the equation.

* * *

Bond considered requesting an undercover mission, no contact with MI6.  
Because he was really growing attached to Q's voice. Normally soft, with a light rumble. Even when he was tearing someone to pieces with insults and disdain, it only gathered a sharper note, without rising in volume. Even, clear, lilting, at all the right times. Bond learned to hear the smile, the frown, the frustration, the victory, in his quartermaster's voice more easily than he could kill a man. And he found this new ability was just as disturbing as most found his ease with killing.  
Q spoke his thoughts, often forgetting he was actually speaking. Bond was used to people selecting their words with deadly precision, as Q normally did in the office. Yet after Bond had asked, Q had quickly given up any barriers. Or maybe he had just forgotten.  
Q seemed to forget things. He remembered the important bits, or what he thought were the important bits. Laws, for instance, weren't important. Birthdays, even his own, not important. Fashion, not important. Occasionally, sleep and food weren't important.  
Tea was important. Drink-it-or-someone-gets-hurt important. Technology and efficiency were important. Art was important. And agents, the lives under his care, were important.  
Bond hadn't realized how important they were to Q at first, thinking of the quartermaster's original allocation of agents as necessary tools for pulling triggers.  
In reality, they were more than troublesome necessities to Q, and Bond could now hear just how much time and care he had for them. Q drew up almost overly detailed plans, inspected each piece of equipment, and provided constant support. He customized their equipment, accepted their requests, and listened to their complaints. For a man that valued efficiency, he could have been said to waste time on his pet agents.  
It worried Bond. He knew how many agents, especially 00's, survived. Although Bond had rid himself of the idiotic idea that Q was inexperienced, he still did not know how much tragedy the younger man could handle before the loss was too much, before the importance of people was lost while the memories remained.  
Bond didn't want Q to end up like him.

* * *

Weeks of one-sided musing became months of light conversation. Q would ask about the restaurants or the weather, and the question would set off hours of easy discussion. Or verbal sparring, depending on the topic. James had spent far too much MI6 sponsored time attempting to fix Q's fashion sense. Q, for his part, berated James on his reckless...everything.  
Bond noticed that his carefully set rules- don't trust, don't get attached- had been broken as completely as most of his guns.  
He couldn't help trusting Q, a lifeline to reality and agency support. However, increasingly, Q was becoming more than that. Bond had set the ball rolling when he'd ask Q to talk. Now, like Sisyphus, Bond was struggling in vain to defy gravity.  
Bond decided to expend energies on someone other than Q. He sought out a high-class bar, finding an attractive brunette and charming her into his bed.  
"Don't really need to hear this bit. Contact me when you get back to the mission, 007," Q said tartly, cutting the connection.  
Bond tried to ignore the heavy feeling in his stomach, losing himself in the anonymous woman. She didn't even try to kill him in the morning.

* * *

Q attempted to shift Bond's renewed carnal activities into a positive light. He carefully quashed the irrational jealousy and desire to hear Bond's low chuckle. There were duties to attend to.  
After botching three experiments, Q gave up trying to rally his emotions back to professional distance and just concentrated on the clock, expecting to hear Bond's voice in the morning.

* * *

Q couldn't abide by stupidity in any form. He'd cast out the so-called engineer who had tried to make a profit from MI6 technology. He'd handed in the report to M without regret, despite knowing a weight sentence would await the greedy man at his flat, in the form of MI6's "cleaning" crew. Q had calmly tasered the agent who had shouted invectives at one of his technicians, expelling him from the branch. Then he cut all of his support from the Q branch until the man was forced out of the field.  
He didn't yet know what he would do to the incompetent that had given Bond a faulty gun.

* * *

Bond had never heard Q shout before. The man had always appeared as a nucleus of genius and sarcasm contained in a slight form and controlled voice. Nonetheless, Q practically screamed over the comms when Bond took a hit to the shoulder. Admittedly, all Q had heard was the curse Bond let loose when his gun didn't fire, and then an enemy shot. That may have worried his quartermaster just a tad.  
"007. 007! Report. Bond. _James. _Report!"  
Bond coughed, struggling to breath with a bullet lodged in his chest. "Misfire," he gritted out, before the mercenary approached and yanked out his earpiece. This really shouldn't become a habit.

Now Bond could identify another of Q's tones-terror.

* * *

Q raised a pistol and pointed it calmly at the trembling tech before him. "Were. You. Paid," Q's voice was dangerously icy, his eyes flashing. The hand that held the gun remained steady.  
"No, it was an accident," he stuttered out.  
"I don't believe you," Q's finger moved to the trigger. He had checked the logs, checked the video.  
"Listen, I-" the traitor gulped as Q's head quirked to the side and his eyebrows rose in ridicule.  
"Oh, I am listening. I am waiting, however, to actually hear anything."  
"I don't know their names, honestly," his last resolve crumbled under Q's unexpected rage.  
"Wrong answer," Q's finger curled over the trigger.  
"Really!" panicked now, the man gave up, "They called _me _I didn't get their name. I don't know anything."  
"I believe you," the man relaxed, "Unfortunate, really." Q pulled the trigger.  
He paused a moment, before moving to sit down at the computer, unfazed. "Explain to Tanner, he'll have it cleared up," he instructed a stricken technician. "Everyone else: this is MI6 not some bloody Apple office, get to work. An agent is missing, in case you forgot."

* * *

Q buried his face in his hands, lost. In three days, one of Britain's most valuable assets had been lost- under his watch. Worse yet, Q had inadvisably fallen in love with the valuable asset.  
"Think of what the P.M would say," Q said to himself, laughing briefly and without humour.  
He had killed a man. Q had killed before, but always through a screen or an order. The man would have been executed either way. Q had no need to do it.  
Shaking his head, Q turned back to the screen, searching again for any sign of Bond.

* * *

M didn't ask why Q had shot the tech, or why he was neglecting projects deemed a priority for the ever-missing Bond. None of the other projects were yet urgent enough to necessitate his involvement.  
M gave Bond's quartermaster two weeks, unfettered. Two weeks to devote his extremely valuable time to the search.  
After three, M suspended him, temporarily promoting another to his place.  
All were advised to ignore any apparent intrusion of their system from the erstwhile Q's location.

* * *

A further week into his self-inflicted solitude, Moneypenny arrived at Q's flat. She strolled in, watching as he navigated walls of screens and tangles of wires.  
"He's not dead," she said simply, the only assurance that came to mind, "The bastard is impossible to kill." Q spared her a glance and nodded, Bond's survival a foregone conclusion. "You, on the other hand, might just die if you keep this up." It wasn't a threat, only a conclusion drawn from Q's rapidly devolving situation.  
Q paused in his work, turning to her silently. His usually bright eyes had dulled, a broken look entering his face.  
"Oh, God. I know that look. Tell me you don't love him," Eve watched Q's reaction, "Bugger."

* * *

Q was insistent in his sulk, but Eve was a damn force of nature. She had the Quartermaster back at his post within the day. He was allowed a screen that he guarded viciously and set up with his own program to alert him to any signs of Bond.  
M made sure that most would attribute Q's exceptional concern to hearing an agent die for the first time.

* * *

Q's special screen remained blank. Bond, ever the contrarian, walked into headquarters a week after Q's return.  
Moneypenny handed a befuddled Bond an ice pack the moment before Q's fist connected with his face.  
Never one to allow utter confusion to stop him, Bond rubbed his jaw and smiled cheekily. "I don't think hitting agents is allowed." He handed a battered, slightly melted, Walther to Q.  
Q glared at the gun which actually _had_ caused him personal affront. Then he glared at Bond's shoulder, bandaged neatly.  
The agent shifted slightly and looked around at the now empty room.  
Q kept glaring.  
"Could you say something, it's a bit unnerving." Bond's electric blue eyes met the quartermaster's.  
Q blinked, perplexed, and returned to glaring.  
Bond huffed out a sigh. "Well, let's do it the hard way." He grabbed the back of Q's head and pulled him unceremoniously in for a kiss. Q's hand came down carefully on Bond's arms, and then around to his shoulder blades, returning the kiss. Bond made a pleased noise and intensified the kiss, nipping lightly at Q's lower lips and pressing him closer.  
Q separated momentarily, "I don't think kissing agents is allowed."  
"Shut up," Bond growled, and centered his attention on Q's neck.  
"Before you wanted me- ah- to talk, and now you want me quiet, which is it?"  
In answer, Bond covered Q's mouth with his own and backed him up to a nearby desk, rolling his hips slightly. Q groaned, and Bond smiled, pulling away.  
"Still not quiet," he said fondly, gazing at Q's dark green eyes through the now crooked glasses.  
"You did ask me to talk to you," Q replied breathlessly.  
Bond's face grew serious. "Was it a mistake?" he asked, almost to himself.  
"Hell no," Q responded, yanking Bond even closer.  
"I love it when you curse," Bond leaned in again, leaving the rest unspoken but not unheard.

* * *

**A/N: **Okay, I built that up a bit more than I expected, sorry if you have to run for PWP now. I did the kissing scene as best I could. There should be a sequel at some point, when I get it written. Thank you for reading, I welcome reviews and comments.


End file.
